There are several well recognized advantages in hand made cigarettes. Aside from the obvious cost advantage, hand made cigarettes offer the consumer the opportunity to customize the cigarette to their own preference for tobacco weight, firmness, draw resistance and the like. Two drawbacks associated with hand made cigarettes are the inability or difficulty in positioning of a filter on the end of the hand made cigarette and the appearance. These two problems were overcome by pre-made filter tipped cigarette tubes which can be loaded with tobacco by use of, for example, a device described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,793 and sold under the trade-mark SUSSEX.
A convenient kit for packaging loose tobacco and cigarette tubes comprises the tobacco in a separate foil sealed container and a box or boxes of filter tipped cigarette tubes. The tobacco container includes a separate lid with optional moistening strip where the foil seal once removed is discarded. The cigarette tubes are stored in rows, lying flat in the boxes. The tobacco container and boxes are packaged together in a kit. The tobacco container and boxes can of course be separated and hence, misplaced. The box of cigarette tubes is normally of light paper weight construction which can be crushed.
The step of loading the tobacco into the cigarette tube filling device can result in considerable mess and wasted loose tobacco because the container for the loose tobacco is of a size to only accommodate the tobacco. On pulling tobacco from the container for use in the filling device, spillage of tobacco outside of the container can result.
In accordance with this invention, a cigarette tube container for use in a packaging system is provided which overcomes several of the above problems and provides many unexpected advantages over these prior art systems.